May 30, 2011

Chickens

Last year my mother told me her neighbor (behind her) got chickens. I was totally intrigued by the idea of having chickens...even though I am not much of a pet person. I mean, we have a dog...but that is the only type of pet I have ever had besides a kitten once as a little girl- but the kitten was totally mean and because of that I named it Psycho...and vowed I would never get a kitten again.

But back to chickens-

My parent's neighbor's little girl is in Reiley's class. So I talked to her mom a bit last year about the chickens while waiting to pick up Reiley and she explained it was just something fun they were doing and they collect their eggs and how they are pretty easy to take care of and clean up after. She had also asked me if it bothered my parents at all to which I replied- no, not at all. My mom actually said she liked hearing their little noises (no rooster noises- just hens) and she liked hearing the kids yell, "Here chickens!" in the morning when they were feeding them.

So several months went by and then a few weeks ago we were driving and talking about pets and Justin said, "We should get chickens" and I was like "YES we should!"

And then for like three weeks I bugged him non-stop and he regretted ever suggesting it. Reiley, quite surprisingly, we had to convince. She was like, "Why would we get chickens?" It didn't take much to convince her though and by the end of the night she was also bugging Justin about getting chickens.

So, last weekend I suggested we go to the store just to look. Just to look. Kinda get an idea of what we would be getting ourselves into. I mean, it would require building a coop, extra cleaning and probably more than we are aware of at this point.

We looked at some pictures of chicken coops online and found one that would be fairly simple to make (speaking of course from my perspective of not needing to make it.) But Justin- he is pretty awesome about making these sort of things so I have complete faith in him.

Then this weekend we went to buy.

Reiley picked out two Barred Rock Pullets and one Buff Orpington Pullet. She picked out one Buff Orpington because it was her favorite. She wanted it to stand out.

We named them after little old ladies. Seemed fitting. We have a Nellie, Elsie and a Verna. Nellie is the yellow chick. We had other names picked out but Reiley was having a hard time keeping it all straight. Even last night she was like, "I love you...what's your name again?"

Right now they are being taken care of in our house while they are little. We have them set up in the second bathroom so we can wash our hands really good (and sanitize) after touching them. By the time they are 4-6 weeks they will be ready to go outside into the coop. We've read up a lot on taking care of them and really we are not the type of people to just go out and buy pets (normally) so this was a huge deal for us.

I was a little nervous about it- no doubt. And Justin reminded me last night they won't be this cute for long. But that's okay- because then we will have eggs and that is pretty cool. I have a lot of reading up to do about eggs now.

I wasn't actually totally aware that it was as popular of a thing as it is to have 'backyard chickens' until last night when I was sending my sister photos and she said, "Cool- a lot of the girls I work with have chickens too."

Made me feel a little bit better and a little less nervous. Kinda more like it's the norm...

Except it's not. But luckily we have great neighbors so I am pretty sure they will be okay with it.